But here is the critical detail: Mississippi has no law against holding a phone.<\/strong> Talking on a phone while driving \u2014 phone held to your ear \u2014 is completely legal in Mississippi. The Legislature drew a deliberate line: texting is prohibited, holding the phone is not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An AI camera cannot see that line. It sees a hand near a phone and flags it as a potential violation. It cannot distinguish between a driver who is texting \u2014 which is illegal \u2014 and a driver who is making a hands-free call with the phone resting in their hand \u2014 which is legal. The officer downstream receives an AI flag for behavior the camera cannot legally classify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not Mississippi\u2019s first encounter with automated traffic enforcement. In 2009, the Legislature passed House Bill 1568 by a near-unanimous vote \u2014 111-9 in the House, 42-9 in the Senate \u2014 banning counties and municipalities from using automated cameras to detect traffic violations. Governor Haley Barbour signed it into law. Jackson and Columbus, the two cities that already had red light cameras at the time, were required to remove them by October 1 of that year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 2009 law was a direct response to the same concerns now being raised about Acusensus: cameras issuing citations without an officer present, government revenue dressed up as public safety, and the fundamental question of whether automated enforcement belongs on public roads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Acusensus contract appears to sidestep that law on a technicality. The 2009 ban covers county and municipal governments \u2014 not state agencies. The Mississippi Department of Public Safety is a state agency. The trailer-based cameras also move constantly, arguably avoiding the \u201cinstalled\u201d standard in the law\u2019s definition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The letter of the 2009 law may not reach this contract. But its spirit could not be clearer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mississippi\u2019s Legislature told cities they could not use cameras to enforce traffic laws. Seventeen years later, the state\u2019s own agency has contracted to do exactly that \u2014 scanning every driver on targeted corridors, flagging potential violations by algorithm, and directing officers to make stops the officers never independently initiated.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMississippi Already Banned These Kinds of Cameras Once<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Question Mississippians Should Be Asking<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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